


Sensations

by Masterweaver



Category: Zombieland Saga (Anime)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-08-24 19:17:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16646114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masterweaver/pseuds/Masterweaver
Summary: They've come back from the dead.That doesn't mean they've come back undamaged.Their bodies feel strange now... in ways they don't often talk about.





	1. Zombie 1: Blossom's Origin

It’s hard to sleep some nights. It’s not just the stress of being an Idol or worrying about the others, even though that’s part of it. It’s the way I have to work out the knots in my spine, trying to align it back into a straight line as I rest on my blanket. If I don’t concentrate while I’m awake, I sometimes start to bend in a strange way and have to snap back up straight. Keeping it straight enough so that it won’t contort in my sleep… well, I’m glad I don’t need to sleep as much anymore. One or two nights a week, staring at the moon… I can live with that.

And it gives me a chance to find Tae-Chan, if she’s wandered out again. She does that, a lot. I don’t think she understands sleep yet. She’s just… eager, to find out more about the world. She doesn’t understand why we’d lay about for hours on end… but then again, she falls asleep at random times. Maybe she has narcolepsy… somehow… despite being dead? I don’t know.

It’s not like it’s that painful, really. Not how you’d expect it to be. The times when my ankle pops out of alignment, that’s painful. Or when my hip suddenly… twists, the wrong way. Or when my arm bends in one more place than it should. That really disturbed me, the first time it happened. I guess I have cracks in my right arm? It’s almost like having two extra elbows that aren’t usually there…

Those are all sharp, brief pains, though. They come and go in an instant, fixed almost before I can even squeak. I don’t know if anybody else has noticed, or if they have… they haven’t said anything. No, the thing with my spine, it’s not… painful, not like that.

It’s insidious, though. That’s a good word for it. Constant. Slow. It grows if I don’t pay attention, from a minor twinge to… screaming, I guess. Or growling, except with pain. I don’t let it get that far. Not after that night. When it gets too be too much, I twist it back.

Oh? That night? Yes, well, when I first woke up I panicked and ran out of the mansion. Looking back, I might have been a bit foolish, but, well… nobody else was awake. So I ran, and my makeup ran off, and I encountered a policeman and I… I was shot. In the back, really. It… didn’t feel, if that makes sense. Oh, there was pain, but… it was like getting stung. Well, um, no. It was… different. It felt…

…These other things I feel, I feel them as me. But the gunshot, it was there. Just there. For a moment, and then… when I woke up, it was gone. I haven’t felt anything from my chest, any pain. I’ve had my head pop off and–it hurt, but it wasn’t like… I don’t know how to describe it. The hurt I feel from things that happen now, it’s distant, more ‘oh that is pain’ then ‘oh that hurts.’ It’s not like my ankle, or arm, or hip, or my spine or…

…well…

I get… headaches sometimes. Little one-two second pangs They’re only on one side of my head–it’s not always the same side, but it is always only one side. And it’s not exactly an ache, either. It’s… it twinkles. I’m sorry, I know that doesn’t make sense. It’s like I know it should be painful, it feels like pain, except it doesn’t.

It’s just as strange feeling it. But you know what’s stranger? I kind of look forward to those headaches. Because, sometimes, very rarely, I’ll get them on both sides of my head at the same time. And they don’t just cancel out. They give me…

…flashes.

Of… well, of before.

The Idol thing seems to trigger the headaches most concurrently. They’re random otherwise. And it’s so… frustrating. I don’t bring it up around the other girls. They’ve gone through so much, really. And I have too, but the thing is, I don’t remember it? And they need somebody hopeful, somebody who has ‘no problems’… not no problems, no. They remember their own deaths. I don’t. I can… I can be the one that smiles. Or hugs. I’m not good at much else, but I know that keeping them together, I can do that.

I mean, sure, Ai-chan can be such a tsundere, but she’s always professional, always honest. And Saki-chan–oh, she never does anything without restraint. That can be a bad thing, but it can be a good thing too. Junko-Chan is so shy all the time, and Lily-chan, she’s… well, a kid. A kid, who died. That’s sad to think about. Yugiri-chan helps us keep level when we really need it, but she… I don’t think she knows about psychology, about how people sometimes need help getting out of their funk. She’s the one who helps us get up, and I’m the one who hugs when people are crying. I think. It’s strange.

And Tae-chan… well. Tae-chan wants to help, I can tell. She’s always so happy to be part of the group… or… eager, anyway. Well. Responsive? Responsive is probably the best word. But for Tae-chan, that’s about as eager as it gets.

They shouldn’t worry about me. Not about this. Not when they’re probably dealing with weird feelings of their own, and their history on top of that. And all the stress of being an Idol, or being transported so far into the future, or dealing with Kotaro-san…

I don’t want them to feel worse than they already do.

So, sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I just get up and sit on the balcony. I watch the night… listen to Romero howl, to the crickets in the grass. Sometimes a car passes by.

I think I’ve seen a couple of high-schoolers. I’m probably the local ghost story now. The mysterious young girl who sits on the abandoned mansion’s balcony sometimes, strawberry hair flowing in the breeze. I wonder what kind of myth got built up about that.

 


	2. Zombie 2: Hope of the Temple

These aren’t the worst injuries I’ve ever gotten.

Okay, yeah, they killed me. Not going to bother denying that. But you don’t live the life I lived without getting banged up a lot. If I’d gotten any one of them on its own, I’d have grumbled for a month or two before getting out of bed and back on my bike. It’s never just getting hurt that gets to you, it’s the cumulative... it’s everything at once. All the damage. Anybody can take a few knocks, even Shrimpy could probably handle it, but when everything needs attention and there’s not enough resources...

That was one of the rules, in my old gang. “Only three breakdowns a month. If you need help, we’ll help, but don’t run us thin.” That’s why we got so powerful so damned quickly, after I whipped everyone into shape. A bunch of teenage girls on motorcycles? The pigs would have rounded us up if we weren’t a well-oiled machine. I made them great, I made us great--

I want to look into what happened. See if the old gang fell apart without me. I’d be disappointed if they did... but I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t be hurt if they didn’t need me. I’ve seen how Sparkles reacts when her old group is brought up. I... honestly... I don’t know if I want to know. Hell, maybe it’s because I care too much. Ain’t that the damnedest thing.

Anyway, yeah, I had broken legs and scratches before I died. And I took what I needed to heal and got back up in a month to beat the people behind it into submission... if there were people behind it. Hell, sometimes if there weren’t. One time my damned bike decided to slip sideways, scraped off a good portion of my leg on the gravel. When I got back on, I took that damn stretch of road three times in an hour. Didn’t slip once. I thought nothing could beat me.

Heh.

Well, that turned out to be wrong, eh?

You want to know what it feels like, don’t you. Yeah, that’s right, I see how you’re looking at my bandages. I see you staring at my scars. Is that what you’re asking all of us? Alright. Yeah, getting smacked now hurts... vicariously. And I mean, it hurts a lot--one time Shades smacked me with a baseball and, well, I got mad and smacked him back. There’s really no denying that. But... it passed. Quicker then a bruise should pass. I think it’s something with how these bodies work. We absorb stuff quicker too--like slap-on patches, or hot spring minerals. I’ve got my theories.

See, those injuries aren’t baked into the body, like the ones that are obvious. This scratch on my leg? That’s a constant... itch isn’t the right word. Itching is al about scratching. This is more like... it feels dry. Like I should be bleeding, right? Same for the arm, and the one on my face. There’s something there missing. Some sort of... I know something is wrong, but it’s like...

I wear my hair in a ponytail. A lot of the time I forget that but sometimes, I feel the tug of the band and I remember ‘oh, yeah, ponytail, that’s right.’ So the same way, I have these scars and I know they hurt, but it’s like I don’t  _remember_  it until something jostles me. Maybe something hits the scar. Maybe something messes with my other injuries. And suddenly I remember ‘oh right, I’m in pain.’ Sparkles probably has it worse, what with...

Anyway, so that’s the scars. The bandages? Yeah, they freaked me out the first time I realized what they meant. See, I can actually flip my elbow around--gross, right? And this other arm, it twists. Like really twists. Oh come on, you wanted to know what was going on, don’t look so disgusted. You haven’t seen me squish and stretch my leg yet!

Hahaha, oh man. The look on your face. Okay, yeah, I’ll stop. Pansy.

There’s... well. There’s one other injury though. I don’t bring it up, because... well, the girls think I wear a sarashi, right? And I do, now. I did before sometimes but... now, I don’t want to take those bandages off. If they even come off. I don’t want to test it. I don’t want to tell the girls that sometimes it’s hard to breathe. I can be soft for them, when they need it, but there’s a difference between being soft and being weak. They need me to be tough, so I can plow through what they don’t feel like standing up to.

Still... these scars... the bending of the limbs, the tightness in my chest... sometimes, I sit back and just listen to the pangs of pain that run through this body, and I have to remind myself this isn’t actually my original body.

Oh? Yeah, the other girls haven’t figured that one out yet. And you’re not going to tell them, got it? It’s something... something I have to bring up. I don’t know how to go about it, though. I figured it out because... let’s just say I had an advantage.

Don’t know how they’d react to that. My old gang, well, they were mostly okay with it, even if they didn’t get it. These girls, throwing on a bit of extra weird on top of what’s already going on... I’m not sure. Egghead would probably be fine... Sparkles too. Shrimpy, I dunno, she’s a kid but she’s mature. Oldie... it’d probably freak her out. Big sis would probably just take it as another strange future thing, and Tae...

Ha. Like Tae would even care.

Funny thing is, even with all the pain and the detachability and the way things don’t hurt so much and how I absorb stuff quickly, this body feels more like  _my_  body then my old body did, you know? Shades might be a crazy moron, maybe he doesn’t even know, but...

...

Nah, I’m not going to let up on him. He steps out of line, I whip him into shape. I think that’s thanks enough.


End file.
